For my thirtieth birthday, amongst other things, Stuart had this bracelet made for me. He asked the designer to put 808.02 on there. It’s the Dewey Decimal Classification number for style manuals. Actually, 808.02 is the DDC for “authorship and editorial techniques,” and 808.027, “editorial techniques,” is where cataloguers are instructed to class style manuals, but that was getting excessively clunky (and I had to log into OCLC Connexion to find that out) so 808.02 it is.

I asked, upon opening the gift, what the DDC number was for. So sue me, I knew the 800 class is literature! That’s more than most people who aren’t librarians or sixth graders could tell you. Stuart said, “it’s for style manuals. Because you’re so stylish.” He’s just being nice – it’s also because I love rules. I love grammar. I love the way different organizations or cultures have sprung up around the correct way to create a bibliography, and why. How for different applications, there are different ways of organizing information and displaying it. There’s a good reason why I love library science. It’s because I love order.

This is one of those teachable moments, realizing how much I love order and organization. I’m thirty now! It’s okay to be obsessed with taxonomies! That’s just who I am! Another thing I am is a woman in her thirties, starting to think about family. And babies. Ohhhh, the kicking ovaries. Ladies, you tried to warn me.

I’ve been stymied as to why a woman already aware of her desire to start a family would suddenly FLIP A SWITCH just because of a birthday. And it’s not, to clarify, that we’re going to have a baby tomorrow. The dog and the graduate degree are enough for me right now. But what’s the difference between spending all of my twenties happily, calmly aware that I was going to have children someday, and turning thirty, where I can’t even look at pictures of my friends’ babies without getting all broody and making funny faces at Stuart? (Although, have you met Esme? You’d want one too.) Seriously, the other day, I found myself cuddling Nano in a distinctly …. swaddling … manner. What! The! Eff!

But today, I was talking to my therapist and I hit on it. In my twenties, starting a family with Stuart was something I was going to do in my thirties. In a very rigid, time-centered way, it was Tomorrow. I wasn’t in my thirties! Oh, guess what. Now I am in my thirties, which means that clock is suddenly labeled Today. And while nothing else, empirically, has changed, everything has changed. This is the decade we’re going to do this … and here we are, in that decade. Someone get me a to-do list! (Don’t worry, that to-do list starts with: Finish Degree.)

Which goes back to my first point, stepping slowly away from all this Heavy Stuff (although feel free to empathize and extemporize on your own clock systems if you have them). I am 808.02! I am your friendly neighborhood organizer. But Stuart also pointed out, I could easily be Greek myths and legends, which would be 398.20938. What would you be, if you were a DDC number? You don’t have to be a library nerd to play along – give me a general category you think would work and I’ll see if I can’t tease out the right number for you. My nerdy expertise could be your new charm bracelet!

Well, DDC usually classes all American fiction in 813 and the other provenances are thereabout. This is usually manifested in libraries by having a separate section for fiction, and then classing the books as 813 and some variation of their author name or initials.

But maritime could mean a variety of things: if you mean, of nautical vessels and engineering, then you could mean 623.8, which is Nautical Engineering and Seamanship. If you mean related to the shoreline and maritime provinces, you could mean 910.02146.

You might be thinking more along the lines of LCSH, which are the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Those are sometimes what you see on the verso, or copyright, page in a book, where you see, like, “Fiction — maritime fiction — young adult — monsters”, or whatever. I totally could log into ClassificationWeb and find you the correct authority heading for maritime fiction but .. well.. I’m at work!

I LOVE THIS. When it comes to giving gifts, Stuart is seriously…gifted (har har).

Bioclocks are weird, eh? When they say “tomorrow,” they’re liberating because you don’t have to do anything about them “today,” but then before you know it it IS Today, and you have to live up to your own expectations. A funny way we planners have of kicking ourselves in the ass when we need it. :)

The same thing happened to be when I hit 30. The overwhelming desire to procreate is hard to explain but something just ‘happens’ when 30 rolls arounds. It’s weird. I was working abroad when I turned 30. Even though I ditched the birth control, I didn’t get pregnant until after I returned home at 32. I figure it might have been because I hadn’t quite crossed ‘work abroad’ off the list at the time. Something within me must have known the timing wasn’t right. You’re definitely right to cross off ‘Finish degree’ first!!

( I’m now 34 and currently pregnant with #2! )
Welcome to your 30s. They’ve been the most exciting for me so far.

As for my DDC…I’m a sailor, an engineer, and a working mom. I’m probably a how-to manual for juggling!

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